Katerina's school nightmare: advice needed, I'm desperate! :(

[Katerina384]

A few days ago I posted about having no school places for my DDs in September. We moved to the area a few months ago ( an oversubscribed area) and originally were offered no school places at all. I also can't find a nursery place for DS, but as I work from home and will soon be on maternity leave I'm not so worried about that for now.

I finally had an email from the LEA today. DD1 has been offered a place in year 3 at a school approx. 4 miles away, and DD2 a place in year 2 at a school 7 miles away in a different direction :( I will be given free transport to school on public buses for both DDs.

The issue here is how I'm going to be able to get both of them to school. I don't drive, so we will have to use public transport. I was speaking to a neighbour of mine whose DC was also offered a place at the school 7 miles away, she and her DC tried the route on public transport and it took them almost 2 hours I can't afford to put one DD into before and after school care to pick up the other as it is, but if it's a 4 hour round trip just to get DD2 to school then it's going to be impossible to get DD1 to school too. I would have to take one DD with me to drop the first one off too IYSWIM, as well as a 4 year old if no nursery place comes up soon and will be heavily pregnant/with a newborn. Surely this is never going to work?

The schools the DDs have been offered places at are both in speical measures and have horrible reputations, but at this moment in time I just want to get them in somewhere, I'll worry about trying to come up with something better later!

I know if I turn down one or more of the places then the LEA have no obligation to find me another one, but I just don't see how we could possibly make this work.

Advice greatly needed!
Katerina

DD1 went to a school nearly 2 miles away for a whole year. Public transport plus grandparents, AP. DD2 had to go along too and then come back for her nursery. Repeat at pickup time. Nothing else we could do. Waited our turn and now they both have a place near home. One year. I appreciate not pregnant/newborn but grandparents not exactly young anymore either, not easy for them. Ask about the transport policy. The 7 mile away school is bonkers. OTOH you'll provably get lucky with the God thing.

Would I be able to contact the HT of the RC school during the holidays or do I have to wait until September? Also, am I likely to get an appeal before Spetember or do they not happen over the school holidays? Sorry, completely new to this!

admission DD1's allocated school is more appealing simply because it's closer and has a better reputation, OFSTED etc, but as she will be year 3 and DD2 will be year 2 I probably have more chance of getting DD1 into DD2's school ( the 7 miles, 2 hours on the bus away one). :( So confused.

3duracellbunnies that's my worry exactly. I think I'm going to wait until after I've appealed to the RC school and another local to us, then if we lose both of these raise the taxi issue then. Although with rush hour around here I can still see the journey taking forever even by taxi :(

The school 7 miles away has no places in year 3, this implies to me it's also full but I need to check that.

Jenny70 DD2's allocated school has no before or after school care, although with the 2 hour travel time each way she would be the DD I didn't put in otherwise it would be ridiculous. DD1's allocated school has no before school care but does have an after school club, but a) I can't afford it and b) we are 33rd on the waiting list- from what I can gather hardly any Reception parents for next year have managed to get places So no help at all. I will use the school responsibility in my appeal, thank you.

MattDamon I do appreciate what your saying that people do have to cope with this, but my situation is such that I think it's physically impossible. I don't have anyone to take one DD to school and I'm not sending DD1 on public transport alone.

If we all go to drop off DD2 at her school at 9 then it will take until 11 to get back to our house ( in the middle of the 2 schools) and around 45-50 minutes to get over to DD1's school, so she won't be arriving until almost 12. That's assuming the changing buses works out. Then almost 3 hours for me to get back over to DD2's school for pick up, so not even time to go home as that takes us to around 3, she finishes at 3.10. Then just under 3 hours back over to DD1's school so won't be able to pick her up until after 5- even if I can by some miracle get her into after school club I can't afford it so either way she's waiting alone for 2 hours. And then just under an hour to get home again, so not getting home until after 6pm. Bearing in mind we'll need to be on a bus again by 7am, so hardly time for anything in the evenings. So out all day with 4 year old and heavily pregnant/newborn, spending 11 hours straight on public buses and no time to go home in between.

When you put it like that it sounds completely ludicrous but that's what we've been offered.

Katerina,
I fully expected you to say that DD1's school is preferred, it is just that infant class size regs could give another issue when it comes to appeal. Having said that the LA making an unreasonable (perverse) decision would be one of the reasons to admit under an ICS appeal, so maybe it is not as big an issue as I would suggest.

The other thing to try to find out is what the class size is for dd1's school and what it will be when she joins. If she will be number 31 or more then it implies that the school is open to increasing class sizes in yr3. Some around here automatically increase the class size in yr3. This means you are more likely to be successful for dd2 on appeal/waiting list when she goes into yr3. If dd1's class size will be 30 then someone left and she got lucky.

Thank you so much everyone for your support and advice so far, you've been a huge help :)

OK, so here's my plan ( such as it is! )

The more I think about it, the more I think the 2 hour away school, DD2's school, is absolutely not going to work, I'm not going try to get DD1 in there because I think we're more likely to be stuck with it for the next few years, also no guarentee I would get DS in there, just not going to work.

I'm going to accept the places I've been offered for now but appeal to get DD2 into DD1's school on grounds of the LEA making a mistake as what we've been offered is so unreasonable- I realise we're unlikely to win this due to infant class sizes but I don't feel I have any choice, a 50 minute bus journey is a stretch but 2 hours is just undoable. I will also appeal to the RC school for both of them, and have added DDs to the waiting lists for all schools we are able to walk to.

3duracellbunnies thank you, I will find out about that tomorrow.

I would suggest emailling the RC school now . The headteacher should be picking up emails throughout the holidays , so if you outline your situation to them there is a possibility that they will get back to you during the holidays . And if they don't then at least you will be on their radar for the start of term .
Best of luck .

What happens in the case of a Lone Parent on benefits? The cost of childcare will be greater than their entire income, as they will be unable to claim any costs from TC's as they are not working.

If they also have no friends or family to help, would that be classed as unreasonable?

I'm asking because that would have been my situation when DS2 was allocated a different school to his siblings, and what I would have appealed on, had I not noticed that DS2 hadn't been put in the right criteria as the LA had omitted the sibling link, and therefore did not follow admission criteria do he ended up as an excepted child due to maladministration.

Just curious to know how that would have gone had he been in the correct criteria, and I HAD appealed on the basis of the LA being unreasonable?

I really do think that this situation is so unreasonable as to be perverse, no reasonable LA would think this was a reasonable solution, one child being sent alone at 7yo on a public bus is actually classed as neglectful by Social Services, so there is also that angle to use (was going to use that in my appeal, had a document from Social Services stating that the LA were in loco parentis while my 6yo and my 10yo with severe SN's (not capable of travelling on a public bus alone now at 14yo, much less at 10 AND being expected to be responsible for a 6yo), and should anything happen to my DC's during that unchaperoned journey, Social Services would hold the LA responsible.

I never ended up needing to use the letter, as I ended up appealing over the missed sibling link (that was on my form), but it was a jolly good back up...

While I don't want to cast doubt on the OP, I have to say that I am reading this thread in disbelief of the utter insanity of the schools catchment situation in England as it is described here.

London schools are bursting at the seams Bonsoir. And this OP is a good example of why that is the case. After the initial allocation, all but the special measures schools will be full and they are often in outlying parts of the boroughs.

You have to be very careful when you move in the middle of the year here, something the OP didn't or couldn't take into account. It's isn't wholly the systems fault.

I my area Bonsoir the year 6 who are just going into year 7 was especially small, following years of gradual decline (my town could have gone from 5 secondaries to 4). By the time year 3/4 goto secondary they will need all 5, and within a couple of years will be struggling for places for those from the villages. The situation is worse in London.
It takes time and money to create new schools, which is why the government brought in Free schools (which was actually the same reason Sweden did the same).

I can understand that there are years with more or fewer children in them. What I don't really buy into is the issue of applying to a school. Why can't DCs just be allocated schools according to their street address?

Yes but tiggy the OP hadn't been there for ages like you, they presumably had a choice of where they could live, if they weren't HA or council that is.

On our form we put a banker, ie the closest school that doesn't fill it's places every year so that if we didn't get our catchment school then there would be one nearer and not the other side of the borough.

There are obviously pockets that are Bermuda triangles for school allocation though I accept that, what do we do about it though apart from what we are doing which is bulge classes and, near me, classes not actually at the school but in community buildings up the road.

I guess the other thing to point out is that in cities such as London, land is hideously expensive and hard to find, so even if the LEA wanted to build a new school it might be prohibitively expensive and might not be in the loaction needed, we are talking about houses where there may be 4 or 5 schools within 500m of the people who can't get a place, but no actual land where the people live. Existing schools are in many cases two or three levels high with minimal playground areas to put any portacabins on. The population of the UK and cities in particular has grown significantly. Having a cap on numbers in yr2 and below and faith schools complicate the issue, but hopefully in the OP's case might give her a local option.

Back to the thread, Katerina I hope you get some more positve news soon, and do chat with the priest, he may be on the board of governors and may have some insights into the dynamics of the school.

tiggytape - yes, I understand that. And that is what is mad. School catchments shouldn't be defined by distance from the school. School catchments should be defined by reasonable sectors of streets.

at our rc school.

the preist at parish church is on the governers.

theres also 1 la goverener which is local counciller on parish council, often see him and say hi, kids know him as she talks in assembly.

I suggest you go to the rc school website.

looks whos govererner

try and find some way comtacting them
also email the head at the school and hope they maybe pick up.

i suspect some bits are done through hols.

Yes but when the schools don't have the space to expand and there are so many more children than spaces you still can't easily accomodate people arriving in the area after the admission period, whichever way you divide up the area. Some counties do operate a fixed catchment area as you propose, based on streets, but these don't solve the problems, as once a school is full it is full, and for someone living a long distance from their 'catchment school' may find that there aren't enough spaces for their child in the school, but the next nearest school also prioritises their catchment and will take people who might live further away, but who are in the 'catchment', leaving the orignal applicants in an even worse position. If there are say 1000 places for reception, but 1100 children wanting those places, and the schools have no room to expand, however you determine the admission arrangements 100 children will have no space.

Bonsoir,

Fixed catchment areas - ie the school having to admit everyone who lived in a defined area of a town or city - is unworkable in areas of high population density, especially those with high mobility and where there are significant differences in quality between the schools in one area.

For example, a school might have its catchent area set so that as of today there might be 60 children living in that catchment area, so the primary would fill up its 2 forms each year.

Then that school might have an excellent Ofsted causing families to move to the area, or a new block of flats might be built, or a new housing estate, or simply a bulge year of births, and the number of children needing admission living in that area might suddenly jump to 90. Or 120. The school cannot suddenly create 2 more classrooms for that year and then for every following year (even a jump to 90 in the year, if it is maintained year on year, would need 7 more classrooms, ie a 50% increase in the total floor space needed in the school).

It simply isn't practically feasible on a national scale. It might be in some, more rural areas or ones with very stable populations, particularly where there are lots of schools of similarly good quality and no faith schools messing up the pattern of admissions. But not as a general rule....

Just for comparison, England's population density is four times that of France, and the third largest of the major countries in the world after Bangladesh and S Korea (not including places such as Monaco). Much of that population is in cities, hence the problems.

It is much easier, surely, to adjust school size (where there is some flexibility) when fixed catchments are in operation? Census data or even NHS data would give a good idea of how many DCs in each age group were coming up for school.

I have to disagree. I live in an area of very high population density (Paris) which operates fixed catchments. They are highly workable.